I'm fairly new to Linux myself, although an experienced VB6 programmer and web-hack. I've been trying to get some of my Web-Dev stuff to work on my Linux Box (Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) with some great results and I figured I'd give the Pico stuff a go too.

I don't know enough c++ or have enough time to play with Qt4 to develop drivers or software of my own, so I decided to give WiNE a try. It works great for my Web-Dev applications, and the Pico Technology software boots great too!

However, I haven't tried plugging the Picoscope in to my box yet! This will be the tester! I'll let you know how it goes!

According to our engineers the hardware will not work on WiNe. What I will say though is that we provide drivers for Linux if you wanted to write your own software for our products. You can find drivers on all our USB oscilloscopes.
Kind regards

Hi. I would really like to buy a Picoscope, partially because of the great user interface available in the software, and I run an all-Linux shop.

Wine seems like a great way to gain access to the picoscope software without requiring duplicate development and support effort. PicoTech could write one piece of (possibly tweaked) code and allow it to be run on both platforms.

Earlier in this post it was mentioned that the Picoscope software does not currently work in Wine when the hardware is connected. Why is that? We're all Engineers here... What is the fundamental, low-level issue? I assume it has to do with communicating with the scope. If the linux drivers provide a /dev/ interface for the scope, can the Picoscope software include a way to interact with that /dev special file? The software could take a command-line option, for example "PicoScope.exe -d /dev/pico0", which would communicate that it is being run from within Wine and should use the Linux-driver interface. That would solve a lot of development effort as most of the key elements are already implemented. It could take less than a week of development time to write the mapping between linux driver commands and windows driver commands, and that would open up the PicoScope market to everyone from ultra-mobile-PC buyers to uber-geek Linux enthusiasts.

The current open-source oscilliscope interfaces I've seen are lacking in features and have archaic interfaces. If given access to the PicoScope software in Linux, I would buy two scopes off the bat and would advertise the scope to all of my colleagues. I would hate to be forced into buying a Bitscope because they fully support Linux.

I look forward to a reply from one of your engineers involved with the software development process.

thank to Eric that gave me the hint - and the file - I was able to have a working PS2203 with PicoScope R5.20 on by Ubuntu box but the hardware support works only for the input.

I was not able to get any waveform from the Signal Out BNC connector. In the enclosed picture I had to use an external generator.

When I start the PicoScope I get also some minor error messages about some function that are not present in the PS2000 dll, but these issues don't prevent the input channels to work correctly.

When I inspected the source files used for building the built-in wine dll (a sort of wrapper for the libps2000.so file) I discovered that the functions for running the signal generator weren't there (ps2000_set_sig_gen_built_in, ps2000_set_sig_gen_arbitrary) but even after putting them there and rebuilding --- no luck!

I'm working in a college lab and desperate to get rid of hideously old 1980's eight bit BBCB computers used for data collection. All the plastic casings have turned a nasty mottled yellow and clunky basic programs do little to inspire students.

I like the idea of using a Pico scope as a replacement and there are plenty of unwanted PCs available that'll easily run such a device. Unfortunately needing windows licences is a fly in the ointment. This makes it exciting to hear Picoscope 5 can be made to run through Wine on Linux.

I have Picoscope 5 running on Ubuntu 8.10 - the Intrepid Ibex. The install package got stuck at the select device stage but the program seems to work OK if I just copy the installed files over from a windows PC.

Please could you give details of your Linux-dll workaround Erik. I don't yet have a Pico scope but I'm aggressively using the thumb screws on my manger so should only be a short matter of time. I really want to put the BBCB computers into landfill where they truly belong.